Ezra Varynwood
Ezra Varynwood Ezra Varynwood is an Eyrsan author from the town of Reynauld Bay of the Reynauld Islands. Born in Ne535, Varynwood grew up in obscurity and worked to gain status in her youth to attend the prestigious Marxford University in Vallos. While she excelled in her studies, her time at Marxford was marred by her habitual drunkeness and substance abuse, paired with insubordination aimed at instructors and other University officials. Initially denied graduation despite near-perfect marks in her classes, threat of a lawsuit granted her a private graduation without honors. She was denied application to the Eyrsan Historical Association, a political move that Varynwood herself believed to be the work of the Marxford elite she had spurned during her time at the University. Varynwood is somewhat credited with the invention of the sub-genre of the Historical Novel. Historical fiction had existed long before, but in her penultimate work, the Forge of Astaria, the sub-genre became solidified in the culture of Eyrsa. The work, published under her pseudonym for the first 2 volumes, was universally praised for entertainment, originality and acute historical accuracy. The work became the source for a number of plays and off-shoot novels, which Dr. F. B. Washburn: A Life and Death Limited to authorship and lacking the recognition of scholastic officials, Varynwood was denied her goal of becoming a proper historian, but was determined to pursue and research historical writings regardless. Her first publication was self-funded, a biography of Dr. F. B. Washburn. The work was largely panned, partially due to Varynwood's reputation, but mostly because biographies of her subject already numbered in the hundreds by that point (Washburn was one of the most famous persons in all Eyrsan history). In an effort to stand out from the crowd of biographies, she attempted to find outside sources and present an "alternative view" of the famous statesman. Reviews were often ambiguous with their dissatisfaction but one historian wrote a very brief guest review for the Eyrsan Monthly Post: "...What can be said positively about the work is its historical accuracy- the notes are nearly as long as the standalone piece itself, but that's also the issue. The book reads like a dry account of an everyman's life, not an engaging retelling of an important historical figure. Varynwood has not done her job, she has not communicated the history to her audience, she has merely copied words from her source onto her manuscript. In this case, she's a stenographer, not a historian." Other Works and the Legend of Fredrik Blackhull After multiple failures and attempts to become a historical scholar, Varynwood turned her attention to entertainment. She earned a modest size of profit from a history of the playwright S. Willam Fredrik, surrounding his creation of The Legend of Blackhull. The work was published in Ne559 under a pseudonym, "E. V. Holland", and was championed not by historians, but fans of theater. Only after the novel became popular among the mainstream did historians give a hard look at the work, at which point the work received almost universal praise due to its historical accuracy. "E. V. Holland" began work on the Forge of Astaria in the same year. The Forge of Astaria Death Ezra Varynwood died of unknown, but seemingly natural causes in Ne581 at the age of 46. She was staying in a small inn in her hometown of Reynauld Bay overseeing the construction of her new home. Managers of her estate hoped to find unfinished manuscripts among her belongings, but all they found was an empty safe with a note: "You fuckers think you can get rich off of me dying? Good luck finding my posthumous works. You'd better learn to hold your breath, or learn to breath in the Godswater, because they're all in a safe at the bottom of the Blue Sea. To hell with all of you." While this has spurned some treasure hunters and fortune seekers to look for the "Treasure of Varynwood", most believe that this is merely a practical joke. "What's more likely, that she destroyed/sunk the work she loved dearly? Or that she wanted a bunch of people to waste time looking for a treasure that can never be found because it doesn't exist? I'll take the former."- Varynwood's half-sister, Cal Petria.